A friend asked me what it’s like to play Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and I had a difficult time describing it. The problem is that there’s no other game exactly like it. I had to reach back to the NES… Continue Reading →

A friend asked me what it’s like to play Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and I had a difficult time describing it. The problem is that there’s no other game exactly like it. I had to reach back to the NES days to come up with a comparison.

“Well, it’s like a game that fixes all of Ghostbusters problem so much that it’s not recognizeable.” I made the comparison because you do similar things. Players in both titles get rid of phantoms. In Ghostbusters, it’s a proton pack. With Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, Mario’s brother uses a suped-up vacuum cleaner. They’re presented in similar perspectives but that’s where the comparisons end.

When one Luigi is out, the others will have to revive him.

TEAMWORK IS REQUIRED: I had a chance to play a multiplayer mode for the upcoming title, which is scheduled for release in an already crowded March. It was a four-player Hunter mode on a multiplayer option called Scarescraper, where players try to clear ghosts from a series of floors. It works as a Download Play and through the Internet but the best way to blaze through the levels is via local play.

There are obvious reasons for this, but the best one is communication. Scarescraper relies on teamwork. Players will have to spread out and search for ghosts so they can clear a floor within a set time limit. As one of four differently colored Luigis, they’ll shake vases, open cabinets and shine a dark light to reveal invisible objects in order to jar loose the hidden spirits.

After finding a ghost, it’s harder to wrangle them in. Players will have to use a strobe light to stun them and hold the R button to to suck them in the vacuum. But the ghosts have tricks up their sleeves, too. Some wear masks to block a strobe light. That forces players to suck up an object like an iron ball and use the L button to blow out it out and knock the mask from the spirit’s face.

It’s easier to put away the bigger ghosts if you work together.

WATCH OUT FOR TRAPS: But there are moments when an army of ghosts can overwhelm a player in a room. Luigi can get cursed (so his inputs are reversed) or he fall into a trap and have a vase topple over his head. When this happens, you have to yell out to friends nearby and tell them what room you’re in. They can knock out the vase or suck out the curse.

Unfortunately, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon doesn’t support voice chat online. There is pre-made chat commands mapped to the D-pad though, so you can communicate it that way. But there’s nothing like saying, “I’m in Room A or I’m in Room B.”

After clearing the floor, there is a minigame where players have to grab four red coins. Again, this is where teamwork is essential because you have a few seconds to do it. Those red coins give players advantages in the bonus spin minigame, where players get power-ups like dark light goggles and such.

When it comes to setting up games, players can pick from 5 floors Scarescrapers, 10 floors, 25, floors and endless. Every fifth floor there’s a miniboss and at the top of the building there is a boss. Add on the variable number of floor layouts and there’s a near infinite number of levels.

At the end of every floor, there’s an opportunity to get a bonus power-up for the next level.

DIFFICULT BOSS FIGHT: As for the single-player campaign, I had a chance to check out a boss fight. The premise of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon is this: The titular moon shatters in a valley and this drives the normally peaceful spirits there into an all-out rage. It’s up to Luigi to reassemble the lunar body and bring things back to normal. He’ll explore five different mansions this time around.

The boss fight I encountered took place in a basement and I had to battle a giant spider inhabited by a ghost. The gameplay is puzzle oriented as players have to figure out how to set these webbed cocoons on fire so that it can draw the ghost out and Luigi can suck it up in his vacuum.